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Teenage kids need a lot of Sprawl Quotient

Ikea, amoung others, offers great storage and seating solutions for family rooms.

All you really need to enjoy screen time is comfortable durable seating and lots of storage. This setup is from Ikea. (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

Modular systems like this one from Ikea make ages and stages very easy to deal with since storage and seating are easily altered as the family grows. Two chaise longue work equally well for mom and dad as they do for kids intent on gaming. Art and accessories add colour and visual interest. (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

This great looking bar in designer Joanne Desjarlais’ basement takes up very little room, and with the pool table helps create an entertaining destination on the lower level. (SUPPLIED PHOTO)

When my very tall 18-year-old son and his equally proportioned friends get together, the hall is filled with boat-sized shoes shucked in their owner’s zeal to reach the basement, where they drape themselves over every available surface. Glued to the screen, they occasionally emit a chorus of cheers, but emerge only to forage for food and then vanish in a wake of ripped open cookie packages.

My 12-year-old daughter, on the other hand, prefers to hang out with friends in our living room or in her bedroom. They watch YouTube, text friends (including those in the same room), take photos of each other and Photoshop them before posting online. With the girls, crumbs aren’t the telltale sign they’ve been there, but dozens of nail polish bottles stuck to the coffee table.

As a parent, I wonder if design could play a role not only in corralling the debris, but in bringing the disparate camps together, and whether it’s possible for them to engage in meaningful ways with the People Who Pay the Bills.

I’ve talked to others who share this experience — parents, designers and parent-designers. Some believe the answer is a main-floor family room, while others believe the basement is better because of its SQ (sprawl quotient).

Obviously the location depends a lot on how much space you have. Oakville designer and mom of two teens, Joanne Desjarlais, has two family areas, one in the basement and one off the kitchen in her new home. The main-floor space fits in decor-wise with the rest of the main floor — light walls, a large medium tone wood wall unit, hardwood floors and a cosy rug in front of the fireplace with coppery enamel tile surround. The basement is warmer and a little darker: ochre walls, durable tweed or chenille furniture, beige carpeting and slate tile in the main traffic areas around the bar and pool table.

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City houses don’t have the luxury of so much space, though. Amanda Mills, Ikea public relations specialist, says a media centre requires thinking carefully first about its function. If kids will be doing homework there, will TV be a distraction? If it’s a dedicated video game space, will that limit other family members? If it’s for watching movies or TV, is there room to seat everyone?

Mills believes that sectionals offer the most flexibility and the best SQ. The pieces can be reconfigured, they fit down narrow basement steps and Ikea carries three inexpensive lines, Klivik, Karlstad, and Ektorp, which come as chairs, sofas and chaise longues. The Klivik even comes in leather.

Desjarlais says don’t bother with a coffee table — it’s just in the way, especially for teenage boys. Instead, have end tables or ottomans on wheels for holding controllers. Anticipate how much storage is required by measuring the linear feet of DVDs and games and the gaming consoles, plus DVD players. Keep the screen at eye level when sitting, she adds — if the flat screen is over a fireplace, use a pivot for easy lowering.

If technology were just a design dilemma, though, parental life would be a cakewalk. Instead most of us feel vulnerable and helpless in the face of this new media. Admitting that your kids know more about this stuff than you do is a good first step to a solution, says Facebook safety educator Chris Vollum: “Kids are Digital Natives; parents are Digital Immigrants.”

Basically, parents are looking to control two things: time spent and content consumed.

Time is the easier one to monitor. At Vollum’s house, the rule is “45 minutes on a weekday after homework and other responsibilities have been completed. For weekends, this grows to four, 45-minute sessions.”

Bait-and-switch tactics also work — for example, get them involved in sports or social activities “designed intentionally to bond and enjoy each other’s company as a family, and to minimize the need to hit the video games/computers,” Vollum suggests.

Content management is more challenging, he adds, but you can start by placing computer screens in plain view. “It’s not that we, as parents, want to constantly be looking over our kids’ shoulders, (but) if the computer and gaming system is public, the likelihood of them travelling to the wrong websites and chat sites can be greatly reduced, or eliminated.”

Install password protection on the TV to hide inappropriate titles and time kids’ use. For the internet, parental control software is available through most computer stores; if you have wireless access make sure you buy one that covers the entire network — including laptops and smartphones. When checking the computer, Vollum suggests going beyond “a simple web history search to view each and every site that the computer has visited within a specified time frame.” If your kids know you do this, it’s a built-in monitoring system for them — they don’t like disappointing parents.

Understand that gender matters. When it comes to social media, especially Facebook, Vollum says “girls’ inherent instincts are to be more social and inject more emotion and self-validating words, remarks and photo content into their online personas.” But they also bully at a much deeper, vicious and longer lasting level, too, he says. Boys tend to be more upfront, but “emotionally less involved and if a bullying incident occurs … it tends to play out face-to-face in the form of a physical fight.”

Controlling and monitoring only goes so far, though — the most effective tool parents have is talking to their kids because once they exit the front door, they’re out of your purview. And studies do show that teenagers, despite the eye rolling, not only listen to their parents, but welcome restriction and the caring that it implies.

Vollum, for example, says his 19-year-old daughter frequently mentions that the “rules and knowledge we espoused when she was back in Grade 7 have been a great benefit and have served as a benchmark as to the decisions she makes when online, even today.”

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